3 Escape Kidnap Ring

1 Wounded

A quaint English-Tudor home on Chicago's Northwest Side may have housed a bizarre kidnapping ring, law enforcement authorities said late Sunday, after they discovered three people during the weekend who had been abducted in separate incidents and held for ransom.

The three kidnapping victims, two of whom were factory workers, had apparently been picked at random.

One of the victims, 17-year-old Jaime Estrada of Milwaukee, was found in the 6800 block of West Grand Avenue on Saturday with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He had been taken at gunpoint from a convenience store parking lot in Milwaukee on Thursday and then forced to demand $30,000 ransom from his father and brother in Wisconsin, police said.

On Saturday, Estrada's captors released him. Wounded but conscious, he walked to the closest store, called police and was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital. By Sunday, doctors upgraded his condition from critical to serious.

In related incidents, police discovered two other kidnapping victims over the weekend, Rafael Martines, 45, of the 3100 block of North Ridgeway Avenue, and Jesus Flores, 50, of the 2500 block of South Springfield Avenue.

A worried neighbor had called police to the Tudor-style home at 3225 N. Newland Ave. in Chicago late Saturday to investigate suspicious people, said Sgt. John Schnoor of Area Five Violent Crimes.

Those "suspicious people" were Martines and Flores, cowering in the bushes after escaping from more than eight days of captivity, said Sgt. Lee Epplen, also of the Area Five Violent Crimes unit.

Neither Martines, Flores nor Estrada had known each other before the attacks, nor had they known their attackers, Epplen said. And yet they all described similar ordeals.

According to police, Martines said he was walking to his factory job along the 3100 block of North Ridgeway on June 22 when several men drove up to him, wielding rifles and handguns.

The day before, Flores, too, had been abducted at gunpoint in his neighborhood as he walked to work in the morning.

Both were bound and taken to the North Newland Avenue home where, they said, they were strapped with duct tape to beams in the basement and made to speak on the telephone to loved ones, to demand money.

"Their families were told that if police got involved, these victims would be killed," Epplen said.

So far, federal agents have arrested three people in connection with the Estrada abduction, a spokesman for the Chicago office of the FBI said. Four more were being sought. No charges had been filed by Sunday, but police said they believed that all of the abductions were carried out by the same people.

Authorities did not release the suspects' names--Epplen said they apparently gave bogus ones. The FBI was checking fingerprints.

In the Estrada case, FBI spokesman Bob Long said that Estrada's family members contacted the agency after they were told to bring ransom money to a meeting place in Chicago.

But the family had federal agents go instead to the meeting place. When the suspects arrived, a chase ensued. It ended with the suspects' arrest at the Damen Avenue exit of the Stevenson Expressway late Friday, Long said.

Neighbors on North Newland Avenue said that a group of young Spanish-speaking men had moved into the house as renters in January, but they had not taken time to introduce themselves or be friendly. None had returned to the house since police descended on the area Saturday evening, they said.

The events left Norma Becker, a next-door neighbor, feeling unsettled and angry.

"I was a little shocked," she said. "The door to their basement is right here. I mean, what next?"

Martines and Flores needed no medical attention, although they told police they had been fed little since they were abducted.

The owner of the North Newland home, Leon Borkowski, believed that the three arrested were indeed his tenants.

He said he had rented to three men in January, and all had references. He said he gave the lease and rental application to police.

It was an unexpected turn of events for tenants he had at one time felt fortunate to have.

"They paid on time every month," Borkowski said. "They looked very nice, they were quiet and polite."